On the National Championship

Posted by: Avinash on Sunday, January 6th, 2008

I will outline some criteria in future posts about what a satisfactory national champion would have to produce. I will say I’m picking Ohio State in that Golden Blogs pool because of two words: Les Miles. But not much more than that.

Note these criteria are absolutely arbitrary. But just like any arguments brought up in this champion debate

—Do they have a signature regular season victory?
Examples include Ohio State ’06 (beating Michigan in #1 vs #2) and USC and Texas ’05 (with memorable victories in South Bend and the Horseshoe), USC ’04 (holding off Aaron Rodgers and Cal), etc.

The closest thing that qualifies for LSU is Florida, a game which has lived up to its billing the past year as crowning the SEC champ. Then again, it’s hard to say beating a four-loss team can qualify as your signature win.

The most memorable team? Appalachian State took those honors in week 1 and ran with them, culminating their season in a threepeat. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell they’re years away from denting the current BCS system.

The most dramatic team? Okay, LSU wins this one, and they are in the title game. But the drama required that they had a Frazier to Ali (like that classic USC-Notre Dame game two years back). LSU looked more like Tyson after Buster Douglas, always underperforming with the talent they had, nearly losing four straight right in the middle of the season due to unfocused coaching and questionable playcalling.

The undefeated team? Hawaii. They had an impressive, physical win over Boise State and well…had to come back to beat Louisiana Tech, Nevada, San Jose State, and last place Pac-10 Washington at home. And now they are dead in the water, annihilated by a Bulldog team they never should have faced.

The hottest team? Tossup between Georgia and USC (who were playing entirely inferior competition). But Georgia got creamed into the ground at Neyland early on, and forfeited their rights to the BCS title game. I watched USC’s November victories and couldn’t really identify anything great about their wins–other than the ASU game, their accomplishments this year were a shadow of their 2004-05 greatness.

Who would I crown? Simple. Since we can’t have a winner, we can’t have an actual champion. And that team is…Appalachian State. DUH.

We’re going to have a lot of fun debates over this offseason about who deserves. I just say give it to Appalachian State. They stole this season from the 119 Division I teams from Week 1. They went into the Big House and did something that has NEVER been done before. And they hung tough after the hangover of victory and perservered to retain the crown in Division I-AA. In a season where the upset reined supreme, the Mountaineers usurped the throne.

But that’s a world where college football dreams are made. Tomorrow we’ll look at who will be crowned national champion so they can mock and ridicule them for weeks. HOT HOT HOT!

[youtube pVENWl8uBeg]



Topics: BCS, College Football

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